The Third International Conference on Development and Learning
(ICDL'04)

Recent advances in artificial intelligence, cognitive science,
neuroscience
and robotics have stimulated the birth and growth of a new research
field, known as computational autonomous mental development.
Although human mental development is a well known subject of study,
e.g., in
developmental psychology, computational studies of mental development
for
either machines or humans had not received sufficient attention in the
past.
Mental development
is a process during which a brain-like natural or artificial
embodied system, under the control of its intrinsic species-specific
developmental program residing in the genes or artificially designed,
develops mental capabilities through its autonomous real-time
interactions
with its environments (including its own internal environment and
components) using its own sensors and effectors. The scope of
mental
development includes cognitive, behavioral, emotional and all other
mental
capabilities that are exhibited by humans, higher animals and
artificial
systems. Investigations of the computational mechanisms of mental
development are expected to improve our systematic understanding of the
working of the wide variety of cognitive and behavioral capabilities in
humans
and to enable autonomous
development of these highly complex capabilities
by robots and other artificial systems.

ICDL-04 is the second regularly scheduled conference following the
conference
celebrated at MIT June 12-15 2002. The origin of these conferences
traces back to the Workshop on Development and Learning (WDL), funded by NSF
and
DARPA, held April 5 - 7, 2000 at Michigan State University .
Some discussion about this new direction is
available on the
final report page of WDL. A brief discussion of the subject
is available in an article appeared in Science available
electronically at SciencePaper.pdf.

An autonomous, real-time, incremental, open-ended, sensor-grounded
and
effector-grounded operational mode of mental development implies that
multiple
disciplines of human intelligence and artificial intelligence face
many
similar research issues. Therefore, this conference series is
multidisciplinary in nature, inviting researchers from all related
fields
including, but not limited to, machine intelligence, machine
learning,
computer vision, speech recognition, robotics, animal learning,
psychology,
neuroscience, computational intelligence, and philosophy. Although
understanding or realizing fully autonomous mode of mental development
is a
goal, intermediate results toward this goal are all encouraged.

The subjects of the conference include, but not limited to

(1) Architecture of mental development
(2) Learning and training techniques that facilitate mental
development
(3) Development of visual, auditory and other sensory cortices
(4) Development of filters and feature detectors
(5) Neural plasticity during development
(6) Development of value system
(7) Development of emotion
(8) Development of cognitive system
(9) Coordination and integration of behaviors through development
(10) Development of attention mechanisms
(11) Development of vision system
(12) Development of audition system
(13) Development of taction system
(14) Integration mechanisms through development
(15) Computational models of language acquisition through development
(16) Generation of representation during development
(17) Integrated developmental programs or systems
(18) Autonomous thinking behaviors through development
(19) Development of consciousness
(20) Robot bodies that facilitate autonomous mental development
(21) Robots capable of autonomous mental development
(22) Robotic techniques for mental development
(23) Comparison of approaches to machine intelligence
(24) Social and philosophical issues of developmental robots